Selling Land in Maidstone

Maidstone has almost no Green Belt, a recent plan and a shortfall on the council's own figures, so what decides a site here is place, landscape and water rather than Green Belt purposes. The land we most want to look at:

• Fields on the edges of Coxheath, Headcorn, Marden or Staplehurst that existing homes, lanes or field boundaries already contain, and that sit clear of Flood Zones 2 and 3.
• Land close to the Maidstone urban area but below the Kent Downs, where the local schools and roads can take more homes.
• Yards, workshops and underused commercial land inside the town, including sites on the council's 2026 brownfield land register.
• Small sites at East Farleigh, Eyhorne Street, Sutton Valence or Yalding, sized to the village rather than to the town.
• Holdings with spare ground where the extra 10% of biodiversity net gain can be delivered beside the homes, which keeps a scheme simpler than buying credits elsewhere.

Land inside the Kent Downs National Landscape, within the Medway floodplain or deep in open countryside far from a village is harder to bring forward, and our review will say so plainly.

• An outright sale. You sell the land as it stands today, privately or at auction. The price is what a buyer will pay for it without planning permission, and the buyer takes on everything that follows.
• A conditional contract. You agree a sale now, but it only completes if planning permission is granted. Until then you keep the land, and the agreement sets out who applies for permission and who pays.
• An option agreement, the route we use. We agree your price at the start, in writing, set above what your land is worth today. We then pay for and run all of the planning work, at our own cost and risk. If permission is granted, we complete the purchase and you receive the agreed price on completion. If it is not, you keep your land and owe nothing.

For land that needs planning permission before it is worth more, an option means you know your price before any work starts and never spend a penny on planning. The ways to sell land for development, compared sets out each route in full.

Two national measures decide how much room there is for land outside the plan, and in Maidstone they point in different directions. The Housing Delivery Test 2025 looks back at homes completed; the five-year supply looks forward at homes the council can show are deliverable.

The fourth row matters most for land outside settlement boundaries. KentOnline reported in July 2025 that the council's head of planning told members the borough had shown 5.1 years on its 2023/24 figures, but that once the 5% buffer required by the December 2024 changes to national policy was added, supply dropped below five years. The shortfall has held since. The latest figure the council has put forward is 4.5 years, which it gave at an appeal in Staplehurst decided in August 2026, where the inspector described the shortfall as modest but still applied the tilted balance.

Under the August 2026 framework, a field that is physically well related to a town or village, and whose homes the local roads, schools and drainage can absorb, can use that shortfall as its evidence of need. It still has to clear every other test, from landscape to flooding and access. Our guide to the 2026 NPPF explains how the unmet need route works step by step.

The same appeal shows that a shortfall opens the door without carrying a scheme through it. The inspector applied the tilted balance to a single accessible home close to Staplehurst's services, yet dismissed the appeal because nothing secured the biodiversity net gain Maidstone requires: the national 10% plus a further 10% under policy LPRSP14(A). Every scheme we prepare here is designed around that 20% from the first site visit, at our cost.

The plan ranks settlements to decide how much growth each should take. The council's Regulation 19 draft, the version put forward for examination, set it out like this:

1. Maidstone town. The county town and its urban area take the largest share, including regeneration and the Invicta Park site. A plot, yard or large garden inside the built-up area is judged under national policy S4, which favours approval and reserves refusal for cases where the harm would substantially outweigh what the scheme brings.
2. Rural service centres. Harrietsham, Headcorn, Lenham, Marden, Staplehurst and Coxheath form the second tier. Land on their edges is the most natural candidate when supply is short, because the plan already accepts that these villages can grow.
3. Larger villages. East Farleigh, Eyhorne Street in Hollingbourne parish, Sutton Valence and Yalding are expected to take more modest growth that suits their size.
4. Smaller villages and open countryside. Here the plan protects rural character and aims to stop settlements merging, while allowing small scale rural employment. Homes are harder, although previously developed land and genuine infill have their own national routes.

The ranking is not a verdict on any one field, but it tells us how the council will weigh the scale of a scheme against the place it sits in.

For an owner selling land near Marden, Coxheath or Headcorn, a scheme scaled to the village's place in that ranking starts from a stronger position than one asking the village to take more than its share.

A new Housing Delivery Test appears every year, and the latest, the Housing Delivery Test 2025 of 17 August 2026, measures completions from April 2022 to March 2025. At 93%, Maidstone sits in the band that calls for an action plan and nothing more. If a later result fell below 85%, the 20% buffer would be added to a supply that the council has already said is under five years, widening the shortfall. A result below 75% would make unmet need automatic for policy S5, whatever the supply. The latest monitoring report on the council's site covers 2024/25, and we will read the next one for early signs.

A Higher Need Figure, a New Plan and a Paused West Kent Council

The council's monitoring page lists a housing land supply position as at 1 April 2025, the latest it has published there. The next position, after the 2025/26 monitoring year, will show whether the strategic sites have started to count. The need figure will move it too. The plan was built on 1,157 homes a year. Once a plan passes five years old, supply is normally measured against the government's standard method instead, and KentOnline reported in April 2026 that the standard method now gives the borough about 1,400 homes a year.

The council's cabinet agreed in October 2025 to start a new Local Plan. Its call for sites closed on 23 August 2026, and the council says the timetable for the plan will be published in due course. KentOnline reported that officers expect the formal plan-making process to begin in April 2027 and that the new national system allows 30 months from start to finish.

Reorganisation is paused. On 16 July 2026 ministers decided that Maidstone would join Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and Malling and Tunbridge Wells in one of four new unitary councils, which the county council said would take over from April 2028. On the timetable reported, a successor council would have completed the new plan. On 7 September 2026, however, the government paused the Kent and Medway decision for a review, so Maidstone Borough Council remains the planning authority and the May 2027 elections are for existing seats. Officers have said they want to move early so that any successor inherits Maidstone's approach. A merged council would also inherit very different delivery records: Sevenoaks at 25%, Tonbridge and Malling at 63% and Tunbridge Wells at 93% in the same test.

Well Placed Land on Today's Supply, Larger Holdings for the New Plan

• Land that already sits well against a town or a rural service centre can be looked at now, on the current supply position, without waiting for the new plan.
• Larger holdings are usually better suited to the new plan, and the council will consult on sites at later stages even though the call for sites has closed.

Our how it works page follows the process from our first look at your land to a decision, all of it at our cost.